5/08/2008

Abusing Quota System

There is an article posted in www.littlespeck.com on the abuses of the education quota in Malaysia. What the writer said is that bumi students with very bad results, not even qualified for university places were not only admitted, but were also given scholarships. The saddest part is that they failed after 3 or 4 years in university, in engineering disciplines, when you really must have the academic knowledge to pass.
What is bad about such abuses is not that money is wasted for a helpless cause. There are many very bad consequences. Universities and their degrees being discredited, university education being wasted, and the time of the students are also wasted. Why waste these poor students time in the university when they could be placed in an institution more suitable to their level of academic and skill needs? They could graduate with a useful skill to earn a living.
If a piece of paper is all the govt wants to give them, just designate a third rate university and print the degrees for them. It will save a lot of money and the time of professors and students, and money for scholarships could be put to better uses.

Well, at least they are discriminating in favor of one of their own. In the City of Possibilities, we have a Manpower Minister who tells Singaporeans to be realistic in their wage expectations and then a govt backbencher urging employers to provide appropriate remuneration to FTs so that they will stay in Singapore. WTF !!??

Plain and simple -- subsidies don't work. All public education is a sham. In this case a desperate political sham.

Not everyone is suited to university, and we all know by now that having a degree is no guarantee toward "success" anymore than the decision to have children is a guarantee to having a "happy family".

The big shame is that the students who are really good get tarred with the same brush if they attend one of these bullshit educational institutions.

And let's not forget this neurotic fixation on "academic achievement". No one will dispute the importance of education, but the psychotic focus on the "piece of paper" as a SYMBOL (yes, symbol -- it ain't the real thing) of "arrival" is at the core of this nonsense.

When people tell me "Oh I just did it to get the piece of paper", I think to myself, "What a seriously brain-damaged motherfucker you are -- you've missed the whole point about LEARNING! You blew your precious life on a mad paper chase. Congratulations, you are now proven to be even DUMBER than when you started your course."

When universities first started, one the best and brightest could get in, It was tough. There were only a few universities around. You had to study really hard, and those old mentors and professors were serious about intellectual rigour. No one was admitted unless they demonstrated that they had the intellect, passion and motivation to succeed, and graduation really meant something.

Nowadays any inbred retard with an internet connection can get a degree or diploma, and better yet, if you are a certain race--the one always moaning about being "downtrodden" and "disenfranchised"--there's a "benevolent government" all set to help you not just financially; but they'll also make it easy for you to pass, and possibly offer you a job too.

*1*. Focus on enjoying people, not on indulging in or accumulating material things.

*2*. Plan to spend whatever you have saved. You deserve to enjoy it and the few healthy years you have left. Travel if you can afford it. Don't leave anything for your children or loved ones to quarrel about. By leaving anything, you may even cause more trouble when you are gone.

*3*. Live in the here and now, not in the yesterdays and tomorrows. It is only today that you can handle. Yesterday is gone, tomorrow may not even happen.

*4*. Enjoy your grandchildren (if blessed with any) but don't be their full time baby sitter. You have no moral obligation to take care of them. Don't have any guilt about refusing to baby sit anyone's kids, including your own grandkids. Your parental obligation is to your children. After you have raised them into responsible adults, your duties of child-rearing babysitting are finished. Let your children raise their own off-springs.

*5*. Accept physical weakness, sickness and other physical pains. It is a part of the aging process. Enjoy whatever your health can allow.

Scholarships originated for the purpose of providing financial assistance to those who are talented but cannot afford to further their education.

So there are actually two important pre-requisites for the award of any scholarship, i.e.

(1) Talented and (2) Financial Hardship.

While Malaysia might have abused it by awarding scholarships to those who do not have the talent to even get a pass in the university, Singapore is guilty of awarding the scholarships to people whose family can afford to send their children for further education without the need for any financial assistance.This has deprived those who are talented but really in need of financial assistance to further their education.

For example, Lee Hsien Loong got not one but three scholarships concurrently when his father and mother were more than wealthy enough to support him in his education.

Redbean, your first commandmant - that's what buddhist are always encourage to be, but sadly, that is what most Singaporeans do not find logical to follow. So what do we have. Someone pointed out to me that 'most' buddhist seem to be poor people and 'most' christians seem to be rich people. I do agree.

First of all fuck religion. I respect the right of people to freely choose their religion, but that doesn't mean they have alos an automatic right to have their choices or the content of their choices 'respected'. i.e. you are free to smoke, eat or drink yourself to death--I respect, and will everyone's right to do those things. But I don't have to approve of it, and I'm free to criticise those choices, and to judge the people who make them.

Religion, like culture, nationalism racial superiority and politics should be mocked and ridiculed for the nonsense that it is, and the damage that it does to our species. Race, politics, culture, nationalism and religion are at the root of every war ever fought.

As redbean pointed out, there is a difference between busaries and scholarships.

I criticise LHL as a govt servant. That is seperate from the fact that the man is a mathematics genius. He got the scholarship, and deserves it, because he is OUTSTANDING in his chosen field of study. The wealth or lack of welath of one's family has nothing to do with it.

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